Commentary

Audience ID Use To Grow To 58% Of Online Ad Spend By 2020

A new report from Yahoo and Enders Analysis estimates cross-device audience ID matching will be used in 58% of online ad spend in the U.K. by 2020, compared with 28% in 2016. Audience IDs are
online identity profiles created from anonymous identifiers in order to recognize and match the same user across different channels, devices or both.

The report also estimated that by 2020,
the proportion of display ad spend that uses audience IDs will be higher than for paid search, representing an estimated 68% of display spend, vs. 55% of paid search. Most of the growth will come from
mobile display and mobile search.

The report said marketers are increasingly interested in using audience IDs, since the tactic enables them to determine who’s seeing their ads across
devices and to better understand and manage ad exposure. There’s also a perception that audience IDs can help marketers better understand campaign reach and attribution in order to determine
return on investment.

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Audience IDs are growing in importance and can help attribute value to ads and determine the role specific ads and channels played in moving consumers along the purchase
funnel. Yahoo said cross-device campaigns and the use of audience IDs enables it to accurately match 89% of users across devices.

Evangelists for audience IDs claim that consumers will
benefit from the technology. How? Pretty much the standard refrain: Consumers will be better off because marketers will use the data to serve more relevant ads that are less intrusive. Audience IDs
can also measure the number of times someone sees a specific ad on all of their devices, thereby making it easier to do frequency capping.